


Still Within the Silence

by rivlee



Series: No Dominion [8]
Category: Spartacus Series (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 14:07:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivlee/pseuds/rivlee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Agron's first Mid-Winter back in Germania. Part of the <i>No Dominion</i> 'verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still Within the Silence

**Author's Note:**

> For the many folks who asked for some of Agron's thoughts on Elill and Duro and Elill.

Mid-Winter was upon them, the most magical time of year, and Agron eagerly took to studying the night skies. He had missed these cloudy winter nights and that distinct smell of snow to come as he burned under Rome’s sun. Five years without a Mid-Winter sacrifice or ceremony. He prayed he would not stumble across the Wild Hunt on any of these nights. Agron had seen his share of war, death, rebellion, and catastrophe for a lifetime. Never an overly religious sort, he prayed more to Freyr than ever for a life of peace. 

The irony was not lost on him; he who often told the gods to get fucked beseeching them after all he’d done. Unlike Duro, there was a time when Agron did believe, did hold faith in sacrifice and prayer. Silence on the gods’ part had seen Agron from his devotion. It was easy to forget he once cared for these practices, looked forward to them with each coming winter, when he was so far removed from sacred evergreens and blessed forest.

No on in Rome, save his fellow Germans, had ever heard of or give prayers to Donar’s Oak. He laughed about his brother-in-arms being named after one of their most famous gods. His Donar, the earthly one who fought with axe and found love at Mira’s side, was one of the few he held absolutions with during that time between the rebellion and Duro’s return. It never felt real then, to whisper such words without frost forming in the air. They had no temples like the Romans. They met their gods out here among rock, wood, and air. No chanting song and burned incense were required for invocation; just the sound of wind and the song of water and the smell of the wild. 

“Agron?” Nasir’s voice carried on the wind.

Agron turned to find him huddled inside a cloak at least two sizes too large. Agron’s cloak, made by Gerlind’s hands, a beloved gift to welcome him home. She never lost faith in their eventual return. She never imagined he and Duro would return with three others and so very changed. Agron never believed he would truly have this: Nasir in his homeland wearing the handiwork of his people. _Their_ people now. 

“What brings you out in this cold so late at night?” Nasir asked. 

Agron looked around him, from the ice-covered tree limbs to the glint of frost on the ground. It all spoke to a world forgotten when blood and sand consumed him.

“Ghosts of The Hunt,” he murmured. 

He gladly leaned into the arm Nasir wrapped around his waist. He buried his face in Nasir’s hair and breathed in that soothing scent. It had changed now; from the woods surrounding the temple, to the stink of the mountain, to the salt-tinged air of the sea, to where it was now, with the smell of deep forest surrounding Nasir. 

Nasir’s hands were still warm when they grasped Agron’s face. He must’ve been buried under furs by the fire. 

“I do not like finding you absent from our bed in the middle of the night,” Nasir chastised.

“Apologies,” Agron murmured into Nasir’s palm. He pressed a kiss there, right across the old scars and new calluses from the smithy work. 

“You are so lost in your mind lately,” Nasir said.

Agron couldn’t disagree. He’d been stuck in reflection for weeks now. It’d become worse the closer they came to Mid-Winter. It used to be a celebration with little variation each year of this life until capture. It wasn’t just the years, the captivity, the arena, the rebellion, the lost sworn brothers and sisters that had changed the very core of _Agron_. It was Nasir. It was Iodocus. It was learning, in the hardest way, that he could stand without Duro. Struggle without him yes, and lose it, but still, stand on his own. It still amazed him that they both found their stumbling ways to happiness on their own. It was Elill and all these people and things he never, ever anticipated in life. All had changed him and he was still deciding if it was for the better; if it would make a returned life here worse. 

There was a plan once about how he would spend his future. Gerlind would be his heir. Even with a position among the Elders in his coming years, Agron never had any intention of marrying for the sake of propriety and property exchange. He knew, long before Rome, where his desires pulled. Agron was always destined for a shield-mate and not a wife. Before their capture the same certainty could not be said of Duro; the farm was never his future besides. Duro was trained and had apprenticed with the smiths and even though he claimed little skill, he had a talent for it. The master craftsman from their village, an older man Duro apprenticed from, had never been much for praise and Duro never expected it. The one here, their father’s age, often complimented Duro on his work and dedication. Duro took it as pity; it made Agron’s stomach roll that his brother still doubted his own success.

No matter the time away or the new people in their lives, some things would never change. 

“Agron,” Nasir said again. 

Agron brushed his lips across Nasir’s own and smiled. “Let us return to the hut.”

Nasir’s eyes looked to the sky and trees, and his brow wrinkled. “It looks to storm again.”

“As to be expected,” Agron said. “I promise we will be home before it starts.”

Agron’s word proved false as they neared the community hut. It was a light dusting though; Agron would never get over the delight of seeing snow caught in Nasir’s hair.

“You will be the one to brush the snarls out when it dries,” Nasir warned.

“A harsh punishment I will somehow find the strength to survive,” Agron teased. 

The moment they crossed the threshold of the communal hut, Nasir was dragged into some game with Gerlind and Duro. It seemed they were not the only ones at a loss for sleep. Agron took a seat by the hearth and watched them, letting the fire work out the chill in his bones. It wasn’t just the flames and shelter that warmed him here; the voices raised in joy filled his heart. A precious gift he thought never to have again, this familiar feel of his people around him. 

Once the worst of winter passed they could take to building their own home without having to worry about constantly clearing the foundations of snow. It wasn’t difficult for Agron to continue life in a shared space. It was something he’d always known. Until the sewers below Capua, he’d never lived without sharing sleeping space with Duro. His brother’s steady breaths and heartbeat beside him always meant a part of home. Now it was Nasir he looked for when he awoke in the morning; if he could feel Nasir’s warmth beside him all would be right in his world.

He knew it wasn’t the best thing to put so much value in his own life on other people. Agron was not a creature meant for a solitary existence. He lost himself to the hunt, to the violence, to war, to bloodlust. He needed a reason to come back from it all; he required a touchstone to keep the madness away. 

Days like this that need felt a weakness.

“It is not,” Elill said.

His low voice startled Agron from his thoughts. All this time and Elill still walked in complete silence. If he turned out to truly be of the gods it would not surprise Agron. No living creature should be so quiet and still. 

“You read minds as well, priest?”

“Oh, did Duro not tell you?” Elill shook his head and the fire light caught the metal beads there. Made by Duro’s hands, Elill wore each and every one Duro had created. “Any could easily read yours. That sad turn of your mouth but with such warmth in your eyes as you watch them. You know it is not a weakness to love, Agron.”

“What of needing?”

“You know well how Nasir and Duro feel and you have heard their concerns. Are there times where your need to protect, to take on their burdens, is too much? Of course, you know this, but it is who you are, Agron. At your core, you will always see yourself as a veritable human shield for your loved ones’ problems. I once called you Atlas and I still think that is an apt description.”

Agron laughed. “Your bring slights instead of comforts.”

Elill shrugged. “We all have those times of clinging too tightly and wishing nothing would change. Or we get lost in thinking of what was and praying for its return. Life has not been overly kind to you, though it has rewarded you well in other ways.”

“Vastly rewarded,” Agron agreed. 

His relationship with Elill still wasn’t a comfortable thing but Agron recognized the importance in it. Elill was a part of Duro now, like Nasir was a part of Agron. Agron was not a leader to Elill though; he did not need nor want Agron’s protection. He was older than Agron and that passage was marked not just in years but lived experience. He made the mistake once of thinking Elill delicate, ornamental, nothing more than yet another untrained freed slave more suited to bedchambers than battlegrounds. That was all before he learned Elill had taken a man’s life when Agron was still crying over lost goats. 

They were still adjusting to each other. They loved and cherished the same people. They had similar goals but while Agron let loose his frustrations in physical ways, Elill sought the rivers and trees, the sacred spaces of the clan. Suspicion still rested in Agron’s heart, even though Elill had risked life on numerous occasions for them all. Agron did not want to see Duro betrayed or Nasir or Iodocus hurt by him. Elill knew and remembered a life long before Rome. He knew Duro feared Elill would leave one day, gone with the mists coming down from the mountains. Nasir held the same concern that the one tentative tie to his past and brother would disappear. 

What did they have to offer a religious man whose goddess remained unknown in these lands?

“I wonder if you will ever look at me without that caution in your gaze. Then I understand I would do the same if our positions were reversed,” Elill said. “I do not know how to rest your or Duro or Nasir’s hearts. I will not leave, not without any of you.”

“You would ask Duro to go with you?” Agron could not say he would let such thing pass without protest.

“If the time or opportunity should come, yes, I would ask him. If he refused I would stay. I will not do this without him. We have not come this far to be parted by a little wanderlust.”

Agron respected Elill’s honesty in that moment. Still, it did not seem fair to have him stay here in Germania. “What of your home?”

Elill gestured to everyone gathered. “Is this not it now? Or rather, will it not be?”

“You know my meaning,” Agron said. 

Elill looked amused by Agron’s annoyance. He patted Agron’s shoulder as he stood. “Compromises are required parts of seeking a content life. I do not think them sacrifices or costs. If I never see a temple of Ishtar again in my life, it will not keep me from my worship. If I did not have Duro, Iodocus, all of you, even dear Freya, I would have naught to live for. What then would be the point of it all?” He turned his head to study Duro, a small smile breaking through his sedate mask. “For me, the gods have already answered my deepest, desperate prayers.”

Agron followed his gaze to where it rested on Nasir, Duro, Gerlind, and Iodocus. “In that we are both agreed,” he murmured.

Elill inclined his head before walking over to the group. He said nothing to Duro, just rested the tips of his fingers on the back of Duro’s neck. Duro immediately stood and leaned into Elill’s arms. He wished the others a good night before they both left for their bed. 

Agron met Nasir’s wide smile. Nasir rose from the group as well, he heard the soft wishes for a good night’s rest. Nasir easily slid into the arms Agron held out for him. He kissed Agron’s forehead before settling comfortably at his side. 

“Do not tease your brother for that come the dawn. We are just as horrible.”

“Oh, do I immediately seek to answer your silent commands?” Agron asked.

Nasir tilted his head and Agron immediately leaned down to meet his lips. He was met with a raised eyebrow when he pulled back.

“Not a word,” Agron said. 

Nasir grinned. “I believe that was the point.” His laugh was low, breath softly skittering across Agron’s skin. “I will give you a verbal order though; rest now and dream of only good things. Put aside these worries that weigh you down tonight.”

Agron nodded in agreement. He rested his chin on Nasir’s shoulder and pressed kisses into his hair and behind his ears until he felt Nasir relax in sleep. Reverie would not be so easy for Agron, not when he swore he could hear the war horns and braying hounds carried on the wind. The Hunt would not claim him, not yet, not now when he had all this tying him here and home.


End file.
